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From where do you get the notion that people in general drink cold beverages during a horror movie and warm drinks while coding?
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Steven Jeuris♦Oct 9 '12 at 22:16

I can only agree those are some bad examples, I just hope it's clear enough what I'm after.
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user1306322Oct 9 '12 at 23:46

I understand the question, but for it to be taken seriously it at least has to be framed as a real question and not just any possible hypothesis. Look for any references which lead you to asking this question. E.g. "Does the average intelligence of a bunny increase when drinking soup on a daily basis?" is also a 'clear' question.
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Steven Jeuris♦Oct 10 '12 at 6:45

I'd like to know about fever too, but I guess that really is a different question. As for this question, it just occurred to me that body temperature and time perception could be related. I do understand that many of my questions don't look serious, and I'm sorry I can't support them with studies and research. I'm already at that level of curiosity.
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user1306322Oct 10 '12 at 15:25

@user1306322: Looks like my edits were too radical and did not get approved. I was wondering that myself. Anyway, for the first question, I'd recommend looking/googling for correlational studies between body temperature vs duration judgement tasks. As for the second question(emotions vs hot/cold beverages). i think this is even more conflated.So i'll just throw keywords like affect, arousal level, body temperature, and of course duration judgement.
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Anand JeyaharOct 10 '12 at 19:37

1 Answer
1

It seems that there is a research literature on the topic of the relationship between body temperature and time perception.

Weardon and Penon-Voak (1995) present a literature review of the topic which would be worth reading if this interests you. The following quotes their abstract:

Experiments investigating timing behaviour in humans under conditions
where body temperature was raised or (much more rarely) lowered,
dating from 1927 to 1993, were reviewed. These tested the hypothesis
that humans possess a temperature-sensitive chemical or bio!g,gical
internal clock. Most studies used conditions in which subjects
produced or estimated durations less than 100 sec long, probably using
chronometric counting, but other experimental paradigms were sometimes
employed. Data from each study were expressed in a uniform fashion, as
plots of changes in the rate of subjective time (estimated from
changes in timing behaviour) against changes in body temperature. In
almost all cases, rate of subjective time increased when body
temperature increased above normal, and decreased when body
temperature was lowered below normal, although observations of the
latter type were rare. The data also suggested a parametric effect of
body temperature, with higher temperatures generally producing faster
subjective time. Some possible mechanisms for the effects obtained
were discussed, with the most promising explanation probably being
that the temperature manipulation produces changes in arousal.

Aschoff (1998) also summarises some of this literature and highlights the important distinction between time frames of time perception:

From the point of view of a chronobiologist, human time perception can
be divided into 2 distinct classes that differ in their interaction
with the circadian system: short time intervals in the range of
seconds (up to about 2 min) ... [and]... long time intervals, such as 1 h...
The production of short intervals shows a negative correlation with
body temperature and a positive correlation with the intensity of
illumination, while the 1-h intervals are independent of both these
variables. For the short time intervals, the negative correlation
with body temperature has often been documented (Aschoff and Daan,
1997; Francois, 1927; Hancock, 1993; Hoagland, 1933; Pfaff, 1968;
Wearden and Penton-Voak, 1995), and 2 publications give strong
evidence for a positive correlation with light intensity (Aschoff and
Daan, 1997; Pöppel and Giedke, 1970). With regard to the 1-h
intervals, an independence of light intensity is well supported
(Aschoff and Daan, 1997).

Hancock (1993) summarised the literature and discussed the proposed mechanism:

The general notion of a temperature influence on time perception may
be traced to Pieron (1923,1945)[1] who suggested that "if the speed of
organic processes are modified, by variation and temperature for
instance, mental time will increase or decrease proportionally." It
was Pieron's student Francois (1927 a, b), however, who conducted the
original empirical evaluations of the proposition. Yet, it is Hoagland
who is associated most frequently with this general effect, mainly
because of his postulate of a chemical clock to control estimates of
duration. Using both his own data and those previously collected by
Francois, Hoagland (1933) proposed that estimates of duration were
directly dependent on internal body temperature. He described this
relationship through the Van't Hoff-Arrhenius equation, which
describes the speed of a chemical reaction in relationship to its
temperature in degrees Kelvin. In observing that the collective data
provided a unitary slope value within this equation, Hoagland (1933)
concluded that our judgments of time depend upon "an underlying
chemical master reaction, implying an irreversible chemical mechanism
controlling the consciousness of duration."

References

Aschoff J (1985) On the perception of time during prolonged
temporal isolation. Human Neurobiol 4:41-52.